As I drove into Appleton last night at 5:45 I thought it should be easy to find a parking spot and a spot to sit. If I were to say it was a packed house for the Appleton Prison meeting last it would be an understatement. It took me quite a while to find a space to park and I found myself sitting up front at the meeting …but on the floor.

APPLETON — Gov. Mark Dayton holds the key to reopening the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, local legislators told a crowd of nearly 300 at a community meeting Wednesday evening Appleton.

Sen. Lyle Koenen, DFL-Clara City, and Rep. Tim Miller, R-Prinsburg, kept an optimistic tone as they discussed prospects for bringing what’s being called the “Appleton option’’ to the Legislature this session.Read More...

As the opening date of the 2016 Minnesota Legislative Session approaches in less than 2 weeks, proponents of re-opening Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton are ratchetting-up their efforts to convince lawmakers it makes sense to use the mothballed facility to alleviate prison overcrowding.

Appleton, Minn. – Surrounded by barbed-wire and electric fences, Prairie Correctional Facility sits on the southern edge of this quiet farming community. With capacity to house 1,660 inmates — more than the entire population of Appleton — it ranks among Minnesota’s largest prisons.

“It’s like a small city,” Daren Swenson, the former warden at this privately owned facility, said as he walked its gray corridors on a recent February afternoon pointing to amenities like a barber shop, classrooms and a small chapel that has hosted everything from Catholic mass to Wiccan prayer services.

﻿When Prairie Correctional Facility closed six years ago the town of just over 1400 people lost nearly 350 jobs. CCA, the private company that owns the prison, is hoping to secure a new contract with the state of Minnesota to house overflowing inmates.

APPLETON — Appleton has a message for the state of Minnesota, and will tell it first to a home audience.​It is hosting a community meeting on the proposal to reopen the Prairie Correctional Facility at 6 p.m. Wednesday in the Appleton Armory, 25 North Munsterman Street.

Thank you for your recent story on the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton. It is utterly ridiculous to me that this prison sits empty while Minnesota deals with an overcrowded prison problem.

As the Minnesota House lawmaker who is leading the charge to reopen the Appleton facility, I continue to be frustrated by Gov. Dayton’s opposition to leasing the prison because it makes sense on so many levels.